On the morning of 7/16, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood was stabbed by other prisoners. The attack took place at Pendleton Correctional Facility in the Maximum Security area of the prison. The administration used the stabbing as a justification for putting every prison in the state on lockdown and conducting system-wide searches, raids, and beatings. Since the lockdown began, inmates at the Secure Housing Unit at Wabash Valley had been denied access to water for bathing, sanitation, and cleaning their cells.

In response, a protest took place at the SHU last week. Inmates initiated a response to the administration’s refusal of basic sanitation needs. The inmates flooded the range and have begun a campaign of noise disturbance. In response, the guards cut off all water and electricity to the SHU…

Inmates threw a t-shirt over the security camera on the range and bombarded the guard pod with feces and piss thrown from their cells: “If we have to live in filth, so do you.” Electricity and water were turned back on at 4 am, after many hours without either. Their demands for sanitation and clean water were finally addressed later that evening.

As a condition of coming off this brutal lockdown, the prisoncrats have instituted an intervention by the Internal Affairs Security Threat Group officers to subject the entire prison to interrogations and forced debriefing, including photographing of tattoos and forced declarations of organizational allegiances. The prison officials have said that they won’t come off lockdown until everyone has been subjected to these measures.

Struggles in prison can’t sustain themselves if, on the outside, they only encounter the deadening silence of social submission. By remaining passive on the outside, we give the prison system more room to do whatever it wants to the prisoners in struggle. The inmates at Wabash Valley are protesting to end the system-wide lockdown, to defend their access to basic needs and their
dignity. Without solidarity, this protest could be drowned in beatings and blood, so let’s break the social silence that allows the
Secure Housing (isolation) Units and prison to play their normal, murderous role. Indeed, raids against the rebellious blocks are ongoing right now.

Close the Secure Housing Units and isolation regimes – Isolation is always torture!

Solidarity with the hunger strikers in California prisons and the protests spreading in the Indiana prison system!

Down with prison-society!

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In support of the prisoners’ struggle, an Anarchist Solidarity Initiative in Bloomington is making the following call:

For active and subversive solidarity with the prisoners, to be practiced by whoever feels affinity with their struggles.

There are specific call-in days on Monday, August 1 and Tuesday, August 2nd. Wabash Valley administration can be reached at (812) 398-5050. The Indiana Department of Corrections commissioner can be reached at (317) 232-5711

We demand, in solidarity with the prisoners:
A restoration of access to water and sanitation.
An end to the system-wide lockdown and brutal searches.
An end to forced debriefing and interrogation.
That no prisoner faces repercussions for their participation in protests.

The Department of Corrections is constantly planning to expand the prison system. Last year, it contracted with GEO Group to build a new private prison.